BubbaMon for Firefox

What is this

BubbaMon is as an extension for Firefox. This extension will collect information from your BUBBA server, like hard disk usage, hard disk temperature, uptime and information about active downloads. A short form of download information is available in the status bar, where you can see progressing and completed downloads. Clicking this area will open a pop-up window. At the top you can see some bubba statistics and below this is a list of active downloads. It will also make it easier to add and remove downloads on you BUBBA server.

Installation

hddtemp

To read hard disk temperature, you need to have hddtemp installed on your bubba. This may already be installed, but if it isn’t, just issue aptitude install hddtemp on your bubba server. On a B1, this is a bit more complicated. Visit the support forum at Excito and read the howto (make sure you select to run it as a daemon).

If you own a B1, then you also need to install a special PHP script that will make the hddtemp information available to bubbamon. Right click on this link and save the file on bubba. Preferred location would be in a folder named /var/www/html/bubbamon on bubba, but you can choose whatever you want as long as the web server can reach it. You will also need to rename the file extension from .txt to .php.

Next start your favourite text editor and edit the file you just downloaded. You need to change the service port so it is the same you used when you configured hddtemp. If you used the default value (7634), then you’re good to go, otherwise change it.

Then start firefox and fill in the address field with the address to the file you just edited. If you saved the file in /var/www/html/bubbamon, then the address is http://bubba/bubbamon/hddtemp.php. The output in the browser should be nothing but a single line of text at the top, reading something like |/dev/hda|ST3320620A|45|C|.

Installing the add-on in firefox

To install BubbaMon, click on the link at the top. This will install the add-on (you may have to allow the install if you’ve enabled warnings in preferences). Select Install now and restart firefox. Once firefox is restarted, you should see a new icon in the right of the status bar.

Newer versions of Firefox don’t have a statusbar. Instead, the icon will show in the Add-On bar. This toolbar should become visible once an addon that uses this bar is enabled. This may however not work correctly and if you do not see an icon, then verify that View->Toolbars->Add-on Bar is checked

If you have downloaded the file to disk, then open the file with Firefox by selecting File->Open File…, select Install now and restart Firefox.

Configuration

There are two ways to access the options dialogue, either right click the area in the toolbar/statusbar or select Tools->Add-Ons and then activate the Extensions list and press Preferences.

General

In this tab you set the address to your bubba, the user name and password for the user you want to monitor downloads. You also set the interval in this tab. This determine how often data is fetched from your bubba. It is recommended to use a value equal to or larger than 5. Note that the value isn’t exact. The actual period will depend on how long it takes to fetch the data, but it will not be shorter than set interval.

Bubba server

Settings on this tab are only needed by B1 users who want to monitor hard disk temperature. B2 and B3 users can ignore this tab.

To monitor temperature, you need to enter the address that the help script can be reached on. Note that you shouldn’t enter the host address, only the sub path. If the script is reached on address http://bubba/bubbamon/hddtemp.php, then you should only enter /bubbamon/hddtemp.php.

You can test your settings by pressing the button. This will try and read hard disk temperature using the settings you’ve entered.

Download modes

First of all, when I write ‘torrent file’ I mean the file ending with .torrent, not the actual file you’re interested in (the final ISO file or what ever).

Under normal conditions, downloads are made immediately (the immediate mode). Some sites however require authentication. FTD does not support this at the time of this writing. To enable downloads from such sites, we must first move the torrent file to a new location for FTD that doesn’t require authentication. This is where intermediate mode comes in.

When you select a download in intermediate mode, Firefox will first download the torrent file to a new location that a local web server is handling (your bubba will be perfect for this). The plugin will then instruct FTD to use the new location on the local web server to get the torrent file, and download can commence as usual.

Note that private trackers may allow only a subset of torrent clients. If you’re having problem with a private tracker, try finding out which clients they allow.

Enable immediate downloads

Check this to allow immediate downloads.

Enable intermediate downloads

Check this to allow intermediate downloads.

Intermediate as directory

Enter the path to a directory that is served by a local web server (eg. the public_html folder in your home folder on bubba). If you don’t already have a public_html folder, you can create one by logging on to your bubba and type:

cd ~ mkdir public_html chmod 744 public_html

Intermediate as URI

Enter the web address that you use to reach the folder above. If you used public_html in your home folder, then the address will be http://bubba/~user where user is your user name.

Note that there is a difference in the user interface between having one mode enabled and having both modes enabled. When both modes are enabled, Add to Bubba downloads is a sub menu where you can choose what mode to use. If only one mode is enabled, Add to Bubba downloads will use the enabled mode.

You can test your settings by pressing the button. This will try to create a file in the directory you entered, and then try to download this file from the URI you entered. Finally it will delete the file.

Appearance

In this tab you control what information is shown in the progress bars. A download can have two states, ongoing or completed and each state has its own settings. By using ‘place holders’, you can control what information is shown. Valid place holders are:

{name}

File name

{size}

Size of file

{seeds}

Number of seeds

{peers}

Number of peers

{up}

Upload speed

{down}

Download speed

{uploaded}

Number of bytes uploaded (session based which means it will be reset if bubba is restarted)

{downloaded}

Number of bytes downloaded

{ratio}

Share ratio (number of bytes uploaded / number of bytes downloaded)

The dropdown listbox contain a sample for each place holder, but you can use any string you want, with or without place holders.

Usage

In the status bar you can see the icon and two numbers separated by a colon. This is ongoing downloads followed by finished downloads. If you click on this area a popup will show. In this popup you can see all downloads (if any are active) and the bubba status, like uptime and hard disk usage. Clicking on a download will show a dialogue asking you if you want to cancel that download.

To start new downloads, right click a link on a web page and select Add to Bubba downloads from the popup menu. This will either open up a new sub menu if you have both download modes enabled, or, if you only have one mode enabled, it will initiate a download using this mode.

When the status window is shown, hoovering with the mouse pointer over a download progress bar will display a popup/hint with information about file name, size and transfer speed. Note that this information will not be updated, in other words the information that is shown is the one that was current when popup was displayed.